In the Dwarf Fortress options menu, the Music and Sound option allows you to set the desired volume, however this is a single option that will turn off both music and sound is set to 0.

For the moment I would like to play without the music on, but as a new player, I'm a bit worried that I might miss something important if I do this, like a sound effect indicating that something fun has happened.

Will turning the sound off affect anything other than the music volume?

Turning off the sound will affect something other than the music volume – it will skip running the sound code, giving somewhere between an infinitesimally small and a noticeably large speed boost depending on your system.

Of course, I know that's not what you meant to ask, but it is a pedantic answer to what you wrote. ;)

Are you sure about this? I really doubt that it "skips running the sound code" with the sound off, the computer probably just doesn't power/send signal to the jack.
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authenticgeekSep 9 '11 at 0:28

2

@Nick: No, just like video, sound has to be "rendered", which doesn't need to happen when there is no sound. If you'd run an application in console-mode, it would skip over the video rendering, right? Well, good chance the same goes for DF when the sound is turned off.
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orlpSep 9 '11 at 0:35

Yep. That's what the single option that turns them both off is for. It's not much of a difference, but low-end systems have shown a few FPS of improvement by setting that option to 0.
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SevenSidedDieSep 9 '11 at 16:22